Charging Sudan's Beshir would wreck Darfur peace: Mbeki
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) — South African President Thabo Mbeki said Saturday that Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir must not be prosecuted for war crimes, for fear of upsetting the peace process in Darfur.
Mbeki said Beshir's continued presence as head of state was also required to assist Sudan's general post-civil war security.
"It is important that both of those processes should proceed and both of them require the very active participation of President Beshir," Mbeki told South African public television in an interview given Friday in Bordeaux, France, where he had attended a European Union-South Africa summit.
"I don't know how they would do that if an International Criminal Court says here's a person who has been indicted, because they then must stop interacting with him because this is a wanted criminal, and I don't know how you then implement all of those things."
Mbeki, criticised on the international stage for being soft on Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe during formal mediation over the political crisis there, told SABC-TV he was ready to meet with Beshir to discuss the consequences of ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's call last week for judges to issue a warrant for Beshir's arrest.
Moreno-Ocampo accuses Beshir of instructing his forces to annihilate three non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, masterminding murder, torture, pillaging and the use of rape to commit genocide.
A decision could take several months, but if granted it would be the first warrant issued by The Hague-based court against a sitting head of state.
A spokesman for the South African presidency told AFP Saturday that meetings were scheduled for the coming weeks between the South African and Sudanese governments, without specifying at which level.
In Bordeaux on Friday, the EU and South Africa jointly called on Beshir to make a "gesture" to show it had understood the prosecutor's message.
